You can’t walk around Booksquare headquarters without hearing something about niches. For a change, we’re not talking about the places where dust collects — these are genuine niches where a need years to be filled. A recent study has shown that publishers are realizing these niches exist.
Oh, not those publishers. The study has revealed that the great democratizer (sorry, it’s going to be one of those posts), the Internet, has allowed small publishers to do something they hadn’t done before: make money. It is easier to find bookstore space, to reach wider audiences, advertise. Even shipping seems to be affected.
“The online retailers have significantly altered the industry because they allow small publishers to have their books alongside the books by the big publishers, at least in a virtual retail slot,” she [Margo Baldwin of Chelsea Green Publishers] said. “Before that, if you couldn’t get into a traditional store, you had no distribution channel.”
